


Out of Synch

by Haely_Potter



Series: Bending the Universe [16]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen, TARDIS-sitting gone wrong, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:53:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1298959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haely_Potter/pseuds/Haely_Potter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hey,” she said, looking at her husband over her shoulder. “Did you use a different mug last night?”<br/>“No, and the TARDIS would have washed it during the night if I had,” he answered without looking up from the eggs, adding a pinch of salt.<br/>“That’s weird,” frowned Amy, eventually shrugging, assuming it had been the Doctor even if pink wasn’t really his style.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What do you mean, Dad?!

It all started with a mysterious empty mug in the galley sink one morning. Amy was the first one to notice it and only because normally only four different mugs were used on the TARDIS: a solid sea green one by Rory, a TARDIS blue by River, a crimson one with black flower pattern by Amy herself and a black-and-white number with a simplified rose pattern by the Doctor (the Doctor seemed to love roses, what with all the rose themed things he had).

The mysterious mug was light pink with intricate rose designs on it in a darker shade. It sat in the sink innocently when Amy shuffled in, yawning, and dressed in a blue silk morning gown. She didn't really notice it until the tea was ready and Rory was frying their eggs.

"Hey," she said, looking at her husband over her shoulder. "Did you use a different mug last night?"

"No, and the TARDIS would have washed it during the night if I had," he answered without looking up from the eggs, adding a pinch of salt.

"That's weird," frowned Amy, eventually shrugging, assuming it had been the Doctor even if pink wasn't really his style.

The second strange thing they found (on the same day too) was a mauve quilt in the library by the fire, because Amy and Rory shared a tartan patterned quilt and neither River nor the Doctor used quilts. Something about superior physiology and controlling their body temperature. This time Amy asked the Doctor about it but he said the TARDIS sometimes did things like that and not to pay it any heed. He looked at the quilt with sad eyes, like it had belonged to someone he knew a long time ago, and Amy saw him hit the TARDIS wall and ask her what she was thinking, bringing it out, like it was some important relic of someone very important.

The next evening the wet tracks were the last straw to Amy. The four of them had been on an adventure the whole day so Amy knew it couldn't be any of them, and she dragged the Doctor by his suspenders to investigate. The tracks led to a new door none of them had seen before. There was noise coming from inside and when it abruptly changed from talking to music, Amy guessed it came from some kind of TV.

The Doctor opened the door and poked his head inside and stopped, making it impossible for Amy, Rory and River to see inside too.

"Dad!" she heard a surprised yelp from inside. "What are you doing here? You promised I could spend the week on my own in the TARDIS!"

 _Dad?_  Amy mouthed at Rory who shrugged while the Doctor tensed in the doorway.

"Dad? Why'd you call me dad?" he asked the still unseen girl.

"'Cause you are my dad," answered the girl slowly. "I call you "dad" just like I call mum "mum". I mean, I know I'm growing up but you don't expect Jackie and Jamie to call you the Doctor. That just wouldn't be cool, dad."

"Why are you calling me dad? Who are you?!" asked the Doctor with amounting panic.

The girl laughed. "Very funny dad, joke's over. Are you trying to pay me back for the time I convinced you you'd spontaneously regenerated in your sleep? Is mum gonna pop up next and say she's nineteen again and has just run off with the mad man in the blue box or maybe uncle Jack, saying he has just live through the twentieth century for the first time."

"Uncle Jack? Not Jack Harkness?" asked the Doctor incredulously. "Why would I let you call him uncle?"

"Not you, mum," said the girl and Amy could hear her rolling her eyes. "You call him trouble. But you trust him enough to leave Jackie with him in Cardiff while you and mum go off on your romantic week on Phersus seven." There was a pause. "Did you hit your head, or something?"

The Doctor flinched but took notice of something else the girl said. "Why in the world would I call my child Jackie?"

"After grandma Tyler of course. Dad, are you okay, you're a little pale," the girl asked with concern.

"Jackie Tyler? Grandma Jackie Tyler?" asked the Doctor, close to hyperventilating. Amy had never seen him like that. "That would make your mother Rose Tyler."

"Well, duh." The girl was quiet for a moment. "You really have no idea who I am?"

Jerkily the Doctor shook his head.

"Great," groaned the girl. "How old are you then? Who are you traveling with? Amy and Rory or Clara?"

"Who's Clara?" Amy asked out loud.

"Amy and Rory then," the girl said with a sigh. "The Paradox and her parents. Do come in dad, it's the family quarters, not my room. Tell the Ponds to come in too. Always wanted to meet them, couldn't because of the paradox. Not their daughter, the paradox in New York."

The Doctor entered the room hesitantly but Amy strode straight in. The girl was flopped on a couch. She looked about fifteen human years old and was dressed in red-and-black pajamas, her wet hair hanging over her shoulder. Her hair was dyed blond but her roots were showing. She had a button nose and the Doctor's green eyes. But she obviously wasn't River's daughter.

Amy stood in front of the girl, looking down at her. "Who are you?"

"Donna Tyler, second child and oldest daughter of the Doctor and Rose Tyler. And you're Amelia Pond, the Girl Who Waited. Behind you is your husband Rory Pond, the Last Centurion, the Boy Who Waited Even Longer, and your daughter Melody Pond, aka. River Song, the Doctor's second actual wife and a paradox if I've ever seen one," Donna said, smiling innocently.

"And who is Rose Tyler?" River asked icily, sitting on a chair on her own while the Doctor had taken the other end of the couch and Rory had taken a love seat with more than enough room for Amy.

"The best," shrugged Donna. "Or that's what dad says."

"She really was…" the Doctor said quietly, looking at Donna like he couldn't believe she was there. "Will be? Always was? The most jeopardy friendly companion ever… I took her to see Elvis and she got her face sucked off. I try to take her to see Ian Dury and we meet a werewolf. I take her home and her mother is being stalked. I put the TARDIS on random-"

"And you end up on an impossible planet in the orbit around a black hole. You take her ex-boyfriend along with you and you end up on an abandoned spaceship with time windows to pre-revolutionary France. You take her home for the first time, you're twelve months late. You try to take her to Naples, you end up in Cardiff and meet Charles Dickens on Christmas eve, with ghosts," Donna listed, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, Slitheen in Downing Street was my favorite bedtime story. "I could save the World but lose you." So romantic. And you'd only known mum for three days."

"Bedtime story? You grew up on the TARDIS?" asked Rory, pulling Amy to sit by his side.

"No, I grew up on Gallifrey. I mean, we can't really go to human school, we're much too intelligent for it. Mum taught us to read and write and basic maths in nursery but dad took over as soon as we're eight and began teaching us physics and chemistry and astrological geography and history. Me, I'm already learning temporal physics with Jamie. Jackie's studying the rift in Cardiff and its space-time mechanics. Jamie's staying at aunt Sarah Jane's for the week, he's very good friends with Luke. And he fancies Sky. And he wanted to examine K-9 some more. Uncle Mickey and aunt Martha took the twins to give mum and dad the week off. Me, I'm TARDIS-sitting. Or, I'm supposed to be TARDIS-sitting, but it seems she has taken it upon herself to send me here."

"You sure have a gob on you," the Doctor said, looking unsure of talking to her.

"You named me Donna because I wouldn't stop screaming after I was born and apparently reminded you of the Great Donna Noble. You also say I talk almost as much as the you who wore the pinstriped suit. Genetics is a hard subject for Time Lords. Jackie is a real blond and we both know mum's not, no matter what she says, but your fifth self was. Jamie's ginger, so either you were already grey when you were supposed to be ginger, or will be ginger some day. We really don't know yet, and genetics is my specialty."

"Who's Jamie named after?" asked the Doctor.

"Jamie's named after Jamie McCrimmon and the little boy during the Blitz who's also mum's maternal grandfather. His birth was hard and both mum and Jamie almost died but in the end, everybody lived. The twins were named after Tommy at the Queen's coronation and Timothy from 1913. Now that mum's pregnant again, you're talking names again. If it's a girl, you want to call her Amelia, mum wants to her Ida. If it's a boy, you want to call him Alistair and mum wants to call him Pete. Personally I'm voting for Ida or Alistair. You know, after Ida Scott and the Brigadier."

The Doctor shook his head slowly. "This is... so strange... I went Domestic?"

"Puh-leeaase, dad," Donna scoffed. "Mum domesticated you when you were all leather and big ears and you know it. I mean, you went back on her personal timeline for her after she asked. You wouldn't have done it for anyone else. And you let her change it too."

"It wasn't a big change!" protested the Doctor hotly. "Just what her mum told her of her dad's death!"

"You're adorable dad," grinned Donna, "when you try to justify bending the rules of time for her. Very cute."

"I'm not cute! Amy, tell her I'm not cute!" protested the Doctor, turning to Amy with pleading eyes. Then he paused and whipped his head back to Donna. "Wait a minute! It's impossible for humans and Time Lords to procreate naturally and you said Rose was pregnant!"

Donna stared at him with disbelief. "You really don't know? I thought... I mean it's obvious... really? I mean... you really have no idea?"

"What doesn't he know?" asked River impatiently.

Bur Donna couldn't seem to hear her and was just staring at the Doctor in astonishment before laughing. "The Doctor in the TARDIS doesn't know! I am so telling Jackie and Jamie and the twins! Dad didn't know!" she chortled, holding her stomach and doubling over for laughing so hard.

"Didn't know what?" the Doctor grumbled but deep inside a small flare of hope ignited.

"Mum," Donna calmed down a little, "mum held the Time Vortex for how long, dad?" she asked between chuckles.

The Doctor shrugged helplessly. "Oh... I don't know... five minutes?"

"Try fifteen," Donna rolled her eyes. "And how long did you hold it? Seven seconds? And you regenerated while nothing seemingly happened to mum. Had you done more than a cursory test, you'd have found her DNA changing, mutating, really, to something between a TARDIS and a Gallifreyan."

The Doctor paled significantly and his eyes widened. "And now she's in a Universe with the metacrisis who's going to wither up and decay and die, a Universe where she has neither me nor Jack for forever. She was the one thing I thought I'd done right by and-"

"Dad!" Donna interrupted him. "Like mum would let something like universal walls stop her from coming home. She'd done it before, it was easy to re-calibrate the dimension cannon to lock onto you after the twenty-seven planets. But fixed points prevented her from coming back to you right after, or that's what she said. Personally I think she didn't want to see you married to Paradox over there."

"You really shouldn't call River that," admonished the Doctor. "She's nice and really can't help it."

"Like that ever stopped you from calling uncle Mickey Rickey the Idiot or uncle Jack Captain Shags-a-lot," snorted Donna. "But then, you always were the jealous type."

"What? The Doctor's not jealous," spluttered Amy.

"No, he really is," Donna said seriously, then turned thoughtful. "Or he is with mum. You should see him when someone local flirts with her. Oncoming Storm never looked scarier. Except when he had to save mum from the Great Intelligence. Or so I'm told. I wasn't born yet."

"Do you ever stop talking?" asked River rather hostilely.

"Nope," grinned Donna, obviously enjoying her discomfort. "I open my mouth and words just come out. It's rather disconnecting sometimes. It's why I avoid Luke. I don't want him knowing I find him fascinating, and not just because of his rather complicated beginning and amazing genetics, but because I like the way his eyes look and how he can match me intellectually and how his body ages more slowly than normal humans and his bum, you wouldn't believe it. Sarah Jane and mum like the idea though. Dad, not so much. He says I'm too young to be inhibiting interest in the opposite sex, or anyone, really. And that Luke's too old for me. I don't think so. I mean, on Jamie's timeline he's nineteen, and a four year age gap is nothing on mum and dad's thousand one hundred and seven years."

"I'm already over twelve hundred!" protested the Doctor.

"Yeah, well, mum took the time to mourn her first husband. Well, second husband. She'd married that cave man during one of your adventures, hadn't she? Anyway, I'm just repeating what you and mum have told me. You know, sometimes you share TMI. I really didn't need to know about your third visit to Women Wept and how you kept each other warm during a blizzard. Or your naked adventures on Prima Three. Or any stories of how we were conceived in the TARDIS console room or the library, or that rainy afternoon you spent at Craig and Sophie's, waiting for them to come home, which then led to me. Or see that leash and collar in the TARDIS wardrobe with a dominatrix outfit right next to it. Really, I was traumatized for life after that. I mean, I know you both look like you're in your mid twenties and have the hormones to back it up, but you're still my parents, and parent sex is just gross."

"You really have no filter, do you?" asked Rory, looking mortified.

"Nope, but if you think this is embarrassing, try having random people come up to you to tell you to "tell your big sister to tone it down with her boyfriend" and know that they're talking about your parents. That happened to me in France. France! The planet, mind you, not the country, and they're even more liberal there than in the country. And they had a revolution to get public sex legalized by having massive orgies in front of the parliaments and city halls all over the planet. I'm not kidding, that's when the twins were conceived."

"And you were how old when this happened?" Amy asked haltingly.

"Ten, Jackie was eight and Jamie was thirteen," shrugged Donna. "It was quite a culture shock. I mean, we were all used to a certain level of sexual freedom, what with our parents barely able to keep their hands off of each other, and uncle Jack being from the 51st century when sexual culture is all about sharing, but we'd never actually seen sex. Well, I hadn't, but Jackie had accidentally stumbled on mum and dad "doing it" in the library after we were all supposed to be in bed."

Amy rounded on the Doctor. "Doctor, how could you!"

"What are you shouting at me for?" asked the bewildered Doctor. "I haven't done anything yet!"

"Thirteen, ten and eight, Doctor! That's too young!"

"Too young for what?" Donna wondered. "Sex? The physical aspect of it, maybe, but knowledge never hurt anyone and it really was better to have mum and dad there to explain things. How were we supposed to discover sex in you opinion, then, Amelia Pond? The internet? Books?  _Porn_? And hey, once there was no such thing as a cultural taboo subject, we could all be more open about everything else too. I mean, yeah, I'm not going to go up to dad and gush about how cute Luke is, but that's why I have mum. And Jackie. And Sky. And aunt Martha. And Clara. Clara's cool."

"Who's Clara then?" asked River.

"Now Clara," Donna smiled smugly. "Who's Clara? Well, she was a Time Lady on Gallifrey who made dad choose this TARDIS over the others, telling him its navigation system was bonkers but that he'd have much more fun. Then she was an art student in the sixties who helped dad and Jamie with something or other. Then she was a bartender in the sixties when dad was exiled on Earth. I'm actually kinda jealous of her, she's been to so many different places, all with dad. Of course, dad never noticed her. She's dad's impossible girl. Clara Oswin Oswald-"

The Doctor drew in a sharp breath and his eyes widened. "Oswin Oswald?" he asked. "Like the girl turned to a Dalek?"

"Oh!" grinned Donna. "You've already met her! This is brilliant! Did she tell you to run, you clever boy, and remember? No, don't answer that, it's what she always tells you. Oh, Clara's cool like you wouldn't believe me. She was always my favorite baby sitter growing up. She had these glow-in-the-dark ghosts that she used to stage plays for us in the dark. It was totally awesome.. Her souffles are the best thing I've ever eaten, but dad says it took her ages to learn to do them properly. Actually, he apparently called her souffle girl for the longest time because she made imaginary souffles when she had actually been turned to a Dalek. She also made them when dad finally met the real her in 2013. "The souffle isn't the souffle, the souffle is the recepie," she always says."

"What does that even mean?" asked Rory.

"We had a philosophical debate about it once, and came to the conclusion it's the same as the idea of a chair represents a chair. Without that idea, there will be no chair. With different instructions you have different chairs. But with one specific set of instructions, you can produce the same chair over and over again. So the chair isn't the chair, the idea of the chair is the chair, you get what I mean? I can never remember the name's of philosophers and that was the idea of some great one," Donna scratched her nose, embarrassed. "Tim is always wroth with me when I mix them up. He's the philosopher of us. Tom is the historian, really. Jackie's interested in space-time physics, Jamie in mechanics and me, well, genetics interest me more. The age old question of nature versus nurture and all that."

"So let me get this straight," said Rory, ribbing his forehead tiredly. "You're the Doctor's future daughter?"

"Well, for me I already am his daughter, but to you I'm just representing one possibility," answered Donna, "But, in a way, yes, I'm the Doctor's future daughter."

"And something's going to happen to us some time in the future and the Doctor is going to pick up a girl named Clara to travel with him."

"It's a bit more complicated than that. From what I've heard, losing you pretty much shut dad down so that he just hang out on a cloud in Victorian London, until he met Clara Oswald, the barmaid pretending to be a governess. But hey, on the plus side, he didn't try to kill himself, unlike when he lost mum the first time, or go crazy, like he did when he lost mum the second time," Donna prattled happily.

"Yeah, I'm too tired for this," said Rory, standing up. "I'm going to bed and maybe think of all this in the morning when I've had ten hours of sleep and haven't just come from saving some lizard species from untimely extinction," he said and shuffled out of the door.

Amy stood up as well. "We'll talk about this later, raggedy man," she said, pointing a finger at the Doctor and followed her husband.

"And what about you?" asked River, looking at Donna. "Shouldn't you be getting sleep?"

She shrugged. "I only sleep a few hours more than dad in a week, and that's only because I'm still growing..." she trailed off, catching River's eyes. "But I think I'll go eat something and leave you two to talk alone." She stood up and stretched. She kissed the Doctor on the cheek and gave him a hug. "Good night dad. Have fun!" she said sarcastically as she left.

Her stomach growled and she realized she actually was hungry and headed to the galley. Maybe there would be some jam or marmalade in the fridge...


	2. Goodbye Donna

Donna had a spoonful of jam in her mouth when River walked in, dad following her, cradling his red cheek. She concentrated on cleaning her raspberry jam jar, the spoon clinking against the glass bottom. It tasted just like the jam her mum made, and for the first time in her life, Donna missed home and her parents. Sadly, she put the nearly empty jar on the table, staring at it.

"Was that the raspberry jam?" asked dad, also staring at the almost empty jar.

Donna glanced at him. "Yeah, mum's raspberry's my favorite."

"Mine too, and I was saving that for a special occasion!" said dad, anger seeping into his voice.

That startled Donna. Dad was never angry at her and her siblings, annoyed, yes, agitated, most likely, disappointed, from time to time, but never angry. She looked at the jar and back up at dad and the differences between this... younger Doctor and dad jumped at her.

His eyes, for one, hid great anger and pain.

For another, he hid his actual emotions behind a more genial mask.

 _This is before he knows he saved Gallifrey, instead of burning it,_  she realized with a small gasp.  _This is before mum came back! He doesn't have an endless supply of mum's raspberry jam like he does at home._

"Sorry, dad, I didn't realize..." she trailed off, regret coloring her voice, and knew her apology was inadequate. "It's just... mum makes more jam when ever we're running low and I didn't even think when I took it. It just reminded me of home... There's still some left, if you want?" she said and offered the rest of the jam as a peace offering.

Dad snatched the jar quickly from her and held it close to himself, sticking his fingers in.

"Um, dad?" said Donna, looking at him with raised eyebrows. "Spoons are over there," she said and nodded to the drawers.

"Who needs spoons," he grumbled and stuck his jam covered fingers to his mouth.

"Mum raps your fingers every time you do that," she said, stretched to take out a clean spoon, and rapped her dad on his fingers with it, like she'd seen mum do a million times before. Then she offered the spoon to him with an arched eyebrow.

The Doctor stared blankly at her before slowly taking the spoon. He turned around but before he got out of the door, Donna heard him muttering "Jam... with a spoon... domestic..."

She shook her head with a smile and stood up. She took out a marmalade jar from the cupboard instead, and started eating.  _Dad would never change..._

River, who had observed the whole thing silently, slid to the chair opposite of Donna. "You shouldn't be here," she finally said.

Donna shrugged. "It's not like any of you will remember me being here or any of the things I told you. I'm sure either the TARDIS gives you all retcon or dad suppresses all your memories. Besides, isn't this what you basically do with dad's timeline? Go backwards on it? Not on purpose, I know, but still. The first time he met you, you told him something that you shouldn't have known because dad was head over heels in love with mum. You told him his name. But because you knew it and told him, he left mum behind with his human clone, breaking all their respective hearts. Then this causality loop happened and he married you to save the universe, leading to you telling him his name the first time he meets you in the first place. I hate temporal physics, they give me a headache," she groaned.

"I suppose that's what it looks like from the outside," agreed River. "But it's not."

"How would you know?" challenged Donna, looking at the woman who had managed to push her parents away from each other for a few hundred years. "Have you got a telepathic connection? Have you shared a mind link? Or even surface thoughts? Are you even telepathic? Or emphatic?"

"No," River admitted. "My gifts from the TARDIS do not extend to the more psychical side of the mind. But the Doctor wouldn't have married me and kept up the illusion of it if it wasn't true."

"Or he didn't need you to follow through the causality loop," pointed out Donna practically. "I'm not saying this to be mean, or anything, in fact I quite pity you, but your whole marriage is a sham. You're not even a rebound wife, which have been known to happen from time to time, aunt Martha was a rebound companion when dad lost mum the first time and the parallels between you and her aren't even there. In fact, you're not even a companion. You're like Madam Vastra and Jenny and Strax, people he trusts and would do nearly anything for, but not everything. You know how he says  _Time can be rewritten_ all the time? He could do it, rewrite your history, but it would take years and years of work, most likely a few centuries, and he won't, can't sit still for so long. That's also the one thing he wouldn't do for mum, but that's because mum wouldn't want him to. Okay, that's a lie, dad couldn't rewrite mum's history because the whole of time and space would never have been born if Bad Wolf didn't happen, and Bad Wolf was the entity that ensured they got together again."

"What's Bad Wolf?" asked River. "This is not the first time I've run across the reference, but I've never found out what it actually is."

"Archaeologist," Donna snorted under her breath before answering, her eyes glowing eerily golden. "Bad Wolf is mum looking into the TARDIS' heart and the TARDIS looking back and the two of them merging to save dad. She's the entire Time Vortex channeled through a twenty-year-old human in love with an alien and wanting him safe. She creates herself. She's the deity that created this Universe after being born in this universe. She is a message scattered across Time and Space to lead mum back to dad when they're separated. She is the beginning and end of everything. She is life and death, damnation and salvation, day and night. She is the voice in the wind, the history and future of everything. She is the alpha wolf who will do anything to defend her mate. It's no coincidence dad has survived everything he has had happen to him. He just had Bad Wolf looking after him long before he knew mum. Does that answer your question?"

"Not even close," answered River plainly.

Donna gave a frustrated sigh and pushed her marmalade away. "Okay... um... say universes had names and were entities in their own right. Ours would be named Bad Wolf. Our parallels would be Bad Wolf 849230.375/Alpha or something similar. But there are other universes out there, some where our laws of physics don't apply, like N-space and E-space that would have their own names that we don't know, we just call them N-space and E-space. They would also have their own parallels. Then there's the void that exists between universes and their parallels. The Void would also have a name of it's own but we call it the Void or Howling but the Void wouldn't have any parallels, because it just doesn't have the capacity to be anything different. Back to Bad Wolf. Bad Wolf is literally everything about this universe, but she was born because mum wanted to save dad from the Daleks and looked into the heart of the TARDIS."

River nodded slowly but Donna saw the she still didn't really get what it meant. But she didn't feel the need to explain it any further. To be honest, she didn't understand it any more either and was just repeating what her parents and the White Guardian had told her.

Still, River changed the subject. "So, who's Donna Noble?" she asked. "You said you were named after the great Donna Noble."

Smiling sadly, Donna told the story of the Most Important Woman in All of Creation and how she had to forget all the good she'd done in her life, had to forget the best friend who would rather she live than spend a short while with him. By the end of the tale, they were both crying for the ex-temp lottery winner from Chiswick.

"After her, dad didn't have any companions until he regenerated and crashed into Amelia Pond's garden," Donna finished and tried to wipe her wet cheeks, only managing to get her pajama sleeves wet. "That's the story of Donna Noble, the sister of dad's hearts."

They sat in silence, Donna reflecting on the reasons she's named after the first Donna, and River thinking of how much she still doesn't know of her husband who, apparently, has been in love with someone else for the whole duration of their marriage. She didn't doubt that the Doctor loved her, but during her rather heated discussion with him earlier he'd confirmed what she'd suspected for some time already: he wasn't in love with her like she was with him.

"Did you know Louisa Montgomery based the character of Anne Shirley on Donna Noble?" Donna finally blurted out, not standing the silence any longer.

The random announcement baffled River who'd been deep in thought. She stared at the young girl in front of her before laughing. "Oh, you are precious, sweetie!"

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

The two talked the night away, snacking on hot chocolate and some jammie dodgers every once in a while, and only Amy and Rory shuffling in for breakfast alerted them to how much time had passed.

Amy took a look at Donna's mug. "So it's yours!" she announced triumphantly and pointed at it meaningfully. "I knew it couldn't be the Doctor's!"

"Of course not, dad's mug is the one Jamie painted, _#1 Dad_  on one side and  _#2 Parent_  on the other," said Donna, like it was obvious, before remembering what point in dad's timeline she was at. "Oh, right, this is before it..." she bit her lip.

Rory was staring at her. "You're really here," he said, disbelief coloring his voice. Shaking his head he went tot eh fridge. "I thought I'd eaten too much cheese before bed and had a strange dream."

"Yeah..." drawled Donna, her tongue poking out from between her teeth in an imitation of mum. "Last time I slept, I dreamed uncle Jack died and we had a funeral for him, which was totally bizarre, seeing as he can't actually stay dead. Then again, Michael Jackson was also dueting with Taylor Swift in it, with the Beatles providing the harmonies and music."

"Hold on, hold on," said Rory as he closed the fridge. "What do you mean, can't stay dead?" he asked as he turned to look at her, bacon and eggs held in his hands.

"Well, mum made him a fixed point in time and he can't stay dead or the universe implodes," shrugged Donna. "I mean, he first died by extermination from Daleks, Then he got shot through the heart. Fell off a cliff, trampled by horses, World War I, World War II, poison, starvation..."

"...stray javelin," added dad as he entered the galley with an empty jam jar which he put on the counter for the TARDIS to deal with. "I remember when he told me. He'd just died not three minutes before from electrocution, and was in a chamber filled with radiation that would have disintegrated anyone else. Of course I'd known from the second Rose brought him back but, well, I was regenerating and really didn't need Jack grating against my senses as well."

"It also probably helped that he'd kissed mum before going off to die," grinned Donna, "while you just couldn't show your feelings. But of course, you indulged before dying, and took the vortex out of her with a kiss when any sort of physical contact would have sufficed. But really?  _I think you need a Doctor_  was definitely not your best pick up line, dad."

"No," dad grinned back. "The best one was  _Did I mention it also travels in time?_  Your mum could shrug off all of space, but add in time, and she ran right into the TARDIS, leaving behind Rickey the Idiot and her life of beans on toast."

"Mum's never had beans on toast, you know that, right?" said Donna, her smile a copy of her mum's, with the tongue peeking out.

The Doctor's breath hitched when he looked at her. "You look so like your mother," he said quietly, eyes roving over her face. "Except for your eyes."

"I've got my father's eyes," she snickered knowingly. "Sirius and Harry in the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban the movie!" she then declared quickly, like it was some kind of test for speed. When no one else said anything and just looked at her strangely, she blushed. "It's a game. If you make and/or recognize any and every reference or quotation of a movie, TV-series, play, book, song or artist, you have to shout out, who, where and in what. We tally it every Friday and the one who wins, gets to choose Sunday lunch's dessert. Or, well, what passes as Sunday lunch. I also made a quotation yesterday, but thought explaining things more important at the time..."

"What quotation?" asked Rory curiously.

" _Now Clara. Who's Clara?_ " answered Donna. "It's Sherlock Holmes from the first taxi scene with John Watson in Study in Pink, the first episode of  _Sherlock_." She looked around, meeting each of their eyes. "That's two points for me."

"Huh," mused dad. "That's actually quite a clever way to make remembering pop culture easier and to introduce it to young children. It must've been my idea!"

"Actually it was mum's since she got tired of eating fish fingers and custard," Donna revealed, "never mind that everyone was already playing it, but with the prize, it became real. And when almost everyone playing the game has a Time Lord's memory, one would think mum would win the least, but she grew up with, you know, reliable telly and a mum who loved watching it. She often makes references that none of us have ever heard of and when we try to accuse her of making them up, she has us research them and, well... they're all there."

"Like what kind of references?" Amy wanted to know.

"Well, we were on a planet that had been populated by humans but then there had been some kind of electrical storm that had shorted out all their technology and they'd reverted to near medieval means and society, and then there was this pit with snakes, and mum goes all  _Snakes? Why does it always have to be snakes?_  and shouting Indiana Jones. I mean, we'd never seen the movies before, but after that, it became Jamie's favorite series." Then she stood up. "Well, I'mma gonna have a shower. I'll be back. The Terminator in the police station scene in the movie The Terminator! Damn, but I'm good..."

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

After her shower she found the others in the console room, bickering over what to do, whether or not to continue traveling even with Donna on board or if they should wait for something to happen to solve the problem she presented. Amy was all for continuing traveling even with her, Rory was all for waiting for something to happen and dad was trying to convince the TARDIS to locate her future self so that they could safely deposit Donna back to her own time. River was staying out of the argument and instead grinned at Donna when she descended the stairs, looking around in awe.

"Oh, it's so different!" she said with a bounce in her step. "Not at all like mum described her first console room, or what Clara said was the  _cold and futuristic center of the alien_ _spaceship_. In my time, there are lots of more seats and child-safe gates everywhere. Tim and Tom learned to open them when they were three, so dad had to change the original ones for taller gates. He was so put out when he realized he'd lost them. Luckily he also found them before mum got home from shopping."

"Baby proofing the TARDIS," muttered dad.

"How domestic of you," teased Amy, bumping his shoulder.

"One day," the Doctor's voice said from the doors of the TARDIS though he stood on the dais with the console and Amy, Rory, River and Donna, "you children will be the regeneration of me."

As one they all turned to the source of the voice and saw the Doctor with a grin on his face. He was attired differently as he had a burgundy velvet coat instead of a tweed jacket, but the bow tie was still safely there. Behind him stood a blond woman with a small baby bump.

"Just like your mum," he continued. "Jeopardy friendly, each and every one of you lot. Can't even leave you to TARDIS-sit without you jumping time tracks. Luckily you didn't jump too far to the past." He turned to the woman beside him. "Can you imagine what old big ears would have said?"

"Children?" she said with an exaggerated frown and northern accent. "In the TARDIS? This isn't a bloody nursery! Don't you dare turn this place domestic!"

"And he still would have let you," the other Doctor grinned at her. "I mean, had he ever gotten over the fact that you wanted an old man with a daft face and guilt problems enough for a whole Galaxy, he would have let you. He'd have let you get away with murder if you'd just blinked those big brown eyes of yours at him."

"Oh really?" asked the woman slowly with half hooded eyes and a lazy smile, her own diluted London accent shining through.

"Oh yes," nodded the other Doctor. "Had you chosen to stay at home instead of go with him to see the plasma storm of Horse head nebula, he'd have come and get you and had that bloody tea with your mother. He'd have grouched the whole time and been miserable company, but he'd have stayed until the last piece of Jackie's Shepherd's pie had disappeared."

"Even then?" asked the woman, slight surprise in her voice.

"Didn't the words "I could save the world but lose you," tell you anything?" asked the other Doctor, tilting his head slightly.

"I didn't really think of you like that just yet," admitted the woman with a small blush. "It started about a week later, you know, that incident with the shower."

The other Doctor grinned and blatantly checked her out. "That gave me material for fantasies for three hundred years."

"And what tided you over for the last one-and-a-half centuries?" she asked, leaning closer.

"Oh, the pool incident and the trip to Kyoto and those Japanese hot springs and that second trip to ancient Rome," answered the other Doctor huskily, his arms going around her middle and pulling her closer.

"Okay, that's enough!" interrupted Donna loudly. "TMI, again! And these people aren't used to you and mum flirting like no tomorrow," she said and gestured wildly to the staring River, Ponds and the younger Doctor.

The other Doctor and the woman turned to look at her, startled, before pulling away from each other reluctantly. "Oh, right, Donna," the other Doctor said and looked at everyone. "Hello! As you can all probably see, I'm the Doctor, and this vision of loveliness is my wife Rose. We're just picking up our daughter. Don't mind us!" he greeted them generally before turning with Rose. "Come along Donna, we've got your siblings to pick up!"

"Wait! Wait, wait, wait, dad!" cried Donna and ran down the stairs, leaving her younger dad and his friends behind. "Bye Ponds! Bye dad! Remember to suppress their memories!" she cried over her shoulder before chasing after her parents. "Mum wasn't showing when you left! How long has it been for you?"

"A month," answered dad over his shoulder, one arm wrapped securely around his wife's waist. "It took us three weeks to track you down."

"Never mind your dad, love," mum told her with a smile. "He doesn't mean that in a bad way. He's just annoyed the TARDIS wouldn't land here before we'd been on twenty different maternity-centered planets, some of which were rather matriarchal and he had to get a property tattoo."

"Among other activities," said Donna and rolled her eyes.

The Doctor turned to look at her. "How did you know? We picked up presents for all of you."

"You mean you didn't spend the last month just shagging mum?" Donna wanted to know.

"No!" denied the Doctor vehemently. "Phersus Seven is a pleasure planet designed for expecting mothers! We've been having massages and relaxing baths and all kinds of delicious health foods and shopping for comfortable shoes that will reduce the swelling of her ankles! And she isn't in the delightful phase of her pregnancy yet. I suspect it'll start sometime next week. Oh! It turned out we're expecting Amelia and Alistair."

"I told you, we're not naming them Amelia and Alistair," huffed Rose. "We're naming them Ida and Pete."

"How about a compromise then?" asked Donna, rolling her eyes at her parents. "Alistair and Ida, same vowels and both have consonants that are powerful. Also, they roll off your tongue easily together, don't you think?"

The Doctor and Rose stared at her before grinning. "Brilliant!" announced the Doctor loudly and turned to Rose. "Our daughter is brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! How come I didn't think of that?"

"Because you're just a Time Lord, lacking that gut feeling that comes hand-in-hand with planet Earth," said Donna smugly, flipping her blond hair over her shoulder and swaggered to the TARDIS, opening the doors with a snap of her fingers.


	3. Displacements

The Doctor and Sarah Jane entered the TARDIS running from newly hostile locals who wanted retribution for their god and the temple that they'd ruined (in reality it was a beacon that would have attracted Sontarans to the planet in a few years and led to the planet being turned to a clone planet).

They leaned against the TARDIS doors, breathing heavily and ignoring the pounding from the outside, eventually starting to laugh.

However, they were interrupted by a young man entering the console room from the hallway leading deeper to the TARDIS. He had a towel around his hips and was toweling his head.

"Dad, is dinner ready yet?" he asked, the towel blocking his line of sight to the Doctor and Sarah Jane. But then he looked up, his eyes landing on Sarah Jane. "Aunt Sarah Jane?!" he asked shrilly, using his head towel to block her view of his chest and looking mortified. "This is so wrong!" He had scotch colored eyes, ginger curls on his head and freckles all over his very pale skin.

"Sarah, I didn't know you were an aunt," the Doctor said, turning to his companion.

"I-I'm not," answered Sarah Jane, not taking her eyes off of the young man. "I'm an only child."

"Well then, some-how-nephew of Sarah... Jelly baby?" the Doctor asked, offering the young man his bag.

"Don't mind if I do, dad," the young man grinned unrepentantly and plucked the bag out of his hand, throwing a couple into his mouth. Then he actually looked at the Doctor and sighed. "Oh, this time again." He turned to the console. "Why can't you react to mum's labor normally, like, I don't know, getting out hot water in the med bay or giving off a mauve alert instead of making us jump time tracks? It's getting ridiculous."

"Dad?" repeated Sarah Jane with wide eyes, glancing at the Doctor who'd gone rigid next to her.

The young man glanced at her again. "Oh yes, dad... Oh, right, I forgot... you have a crush on him right now, don't you?" he frowned at her slightly. "That's a disturbing thought... dad and aunt Sarah Jane..." He shivered.

Sarah Jane's cheeks reddened and she refused to look at the Doctor.

"Why is it disturbing?" the Doctor wanted to know, curiosity clear in his voice, but lacking the heat it would have had, had he had the necessary romantic affection for Sarah Jane.

"Because I'd fancy my sister, no matter how adopted she may be," the young man answered. "And I want Sky to be my sister as much as Donna wants Luke to be our brother. I wouldn't mind, but Luke's my best friend, so brother-in-law would work just as well."

"Who are Sky, Donna and Luke?" Sarah changed the topic.

"Sky and Luke are your adopted children and Donna's my sister," answered the young man. "I'm Jamie Tyler by the way."

"Where'd Tyler come from?"

"It's mum's last name, she's from Earth, 21st century."

"But you feel all Gallifreyan! An Academy student at that!"

"Yes, well, mum absorbing the time vortex may have had the same effect on us as looking to the untempered schism for Gallifreyans so we never had to go through the initiation. Also, since you saved Gallifrey, the high council has been bending backwards to please you, letting us keep traveling with you and specializing in our interests instead of going to the Academy and getting a general education, and as soon as we pass the graduation test, we become fully fledged Time Lords, or so says the contract you made with them regarding any current and/or future children you would have with the lady Bad Wolf," Jamie recited, as if reading from a flash card.

"When you noticed my current self, you said  _it's that time again_ , what did you mean?" asked Sarah Jane curiously.

Jamie sighed with a rueful grin. "Whenever mum goes into labor the TARDIS makes us pre-existing children jump time tracks for some reason if we're in the TARDIS."

There was the sound of TARDIS materializing inside the console room and the blue box faded into view.

"And then dad tracks us down to bring us home," Jamie told them with a sigh just when the other TARDIS' doors opened to show a man in his mid twenties dressed in a burgundy velvet coat and a bow tie.

"Jamie! There you are!" he said excitedly. "Ida and Alistair will be joining us in five hours and your brothers are still missing! I've got a lock on Donna and Jackie, but we've got to hurry. Chop, chop! And put some clothes on while you're at it! Dinner's in the galley in case you want any, but remember to leave some for your siblings. Also give me back my jelly babies."

Rolling his eyes Jamie handed the Doctor his jelly babies back on his way to the other TARDIS but avoided getting closer to Sarah Jane than he had to. The future Doctor let him pass before grinning at his past self and Sarah Jane. "Hello Sarah, bye Sarah," he told her before closing the door in their face and starting dematerialization.

"So..." started Sarah Jane, finally looking at the Doctor again. "I'm aunt Sarah Jane to your children."

"Looks like it," he nodded. "Let's go have some tea before I have to suppress these memories of ours, shall we? I could do with a cuppa."

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

"Oh my God!" a voice screeched from the hallway of the TARDIS, making Rose, Jack, Mickey and the Doctor to turn to the doorway leading deeper to the TARDIS. "I thought mum was exaggerating when she described those ears!"

It was a girl of fifteen, closely resembling Rose, except that she had green eyes and wore much less make up. She wore jeans and a pink hoodie, her style matching Rose's own, except that she wore pink chucks on her feet instead of ratty sneakers.

"Well hello, gorgeous, who are you?" asked Jack, wiggling his eyebrows at the girl.

She just stared at him blankly. "Please tell me you're kidding, uncle Jack," she eventually said. "I don't need to be scarred any more than I already am by meeting dad with River and seeing dad flirt with someone not-mum. Also, I'm fifteen, when we meet again, out age gap is in the thousands."

"Uncle Jack?!" exclaimed the Doctor. "What kind o' idiot would introduce children to Captain Innuendo?"

"Hi dad, nice to see you too, never met this incarnation before," she told him, false cheerfulness in her voice. Then she turned to Rose and Mickey, her smile much more genuine. "Hi mum, hi uncle Mickey! Blimey, you're young... Oh, my God," she said, her eyes darting from Mickey to Jack, realization dawning on her face. "You're in Cardiff! This is  _fantastic_!" she squealed, flapping her hands excitedly. "For the second time! Blaidd Drwg and Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen and the extrapolator! Have you already done the thing where you three talk really fast and confuse uncle Mickey with how to actually refuel the TARDIS?"

"Yeah," nodded Mickey, "just finished when you... came... Whadda ya mean,  _uncle Mickey_?"

"What do you mean  _Whadda ya mean,_ _ **uncle Mickey**_ _?_  Uncle Mickey?" the girl asked and snickered. "You're uncle Mickey, uncle Mickey. Dad was right, this young you really is an idiot."

"Hold on a bleedin' minute!" the Doctor interrupted. "Did you just call Rose your mum and me your dad?"

"It takes you a few centuries and two regenerations," she shrugged, "but you finally tell mum you love her after saving her from the Great Intelligence after not seeing her for four hundred years, never mind that mum herself is three hundred by then and quite mad at you for leaving her in a parallel world for a  _second_  time. Jamie's the first of us, then me, then Jackie, then Tim and Tom and now that Ida and Alistair are being born, the TARDIS made us jump time tracks again."

" _Mum_?" squeaked Rose, her face red and eyes darting between the Doctor and the girl.

"Yes mum, he's in love with you, but because he's an idiot genius he won't say anything for a long time. But then, you should know already.  _Didn't the words_ _ **I could save the world but lose you**_ _mean anything to you?_  And that's a direct quote from dad, believe it or not," the girl told her with a serious nod before turning back to the Doctor. "But I still can't believe mum didn't exaggerate the size of your ears. I guess I should just be thankful I didn't get them. They stick out of your head like trophy handles. Then again, mum would have needed them 'cause you don't have any hair to hold on to,  _bald_  your next self called you when he realized he had hair, according to mum. Her tales of regeneration sound scary. I've never seen regeneration in action. No, wait, yes I have. The controlled regeneration of uncle Koschei on Gallifrey. I was... about six, I think... Jamie would remember better, he was nine..."

"Gallifrey?" parroted the Doctor, his voice wobbly.

"Oh dad, relax, you didn't actually burn it, the whole thing is just... wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey and your timelines were out of sync and you had to forget it," she reassured him offhandedly. "I mean, at first there were three of you and then all thirteen of you banded together to freeze Gallifrey in a stasis cube. Some courses in the Academy are interesting, but I wouldn't give up the freedom to travel with you and mum for anything."

" _Seven children_?" said the incredulous Doctor, blanching, horror slowly creeping up on his face when the names of all his future children registered in his mind. " _The domestics_!" he could be heard whimpering.

"Imagine, in a hundred years if you and mum keep making us like this, there will be thirty-five of us," grinned the girl mischievously.

Then they all could hear the TARDIS materializing a few feet from the girl on the actual floor instead of on the grating.

"And there's my lift!" she said happily, snapping her fingers as soon as the other TARDIS was finished materializing. The doors opened as if on command and a few seconds later a young man with a burgundy velvet coat and bow tie was in the door frame.

"Come along, Donna, Tim and Tom are still missing, but I've got Jackie's location locked in with my seventh self," he said cheerfully. "Have you been babbling again?"

"Of course," said Donna as she skipped to the other TARDIS with a wide grin. "I just open my mouth and words come out."

The young man looked fondly after her before looking at Jack, Mickey and Rose all in turn. "Captain," he nodded, "Mickey," he grinned, "love," he smiled at Rose before closing the TARDIS doors and someone started the dematerialization inside.

"Did anyone else notice that TARDIS was a more vibrant blue than this one?" said Rose. "And what's up with that St. John's Ambulance sticker?"

"I don't know, Rose, I don't know," the Doctor shook his head. "Now c'mere, I better suppress all o' our memories o' this. We don't need another brush in with the reapers."

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

"Daaaad!" the shout echoed in the TARDIS. "What did you do to the console room?"

The Doctor dropped his tea pot and Ace looked up from her oatmeal.

The voice belonged to a young girl of about thirteen years who bounded to the kitchen and froze in the doorway, her eyes going huge when she caught sight of the Doctor and Ace eating breakfast. "Oops," she finally said with a soft and airy voice that was very different from the whining shout from earlier. She had light blond hair pulled to a ponytail and large blue-grey eyes and she was dressed in a pleated green skirt, yellow blouse with rolled up sleeves, white tights and dark green ballerinas. She had radish earrings and a bottle cork necklace.

"Who are you and how did you get into the TARDIS?" asked the Doctor. "I know I locked the door."

"Yes, well, jumping time tracks inside the TARDIS has been known to happen from time to time," the girl answered. "Also, I was tinkering with a Vortex Manipulator in the lab and may have accidentally triggered it... sorry, dad..." she looked at him sheepishly, an apologetic grin on her face and rubbing the back of her neck. "Could also be that mum's-"

"Dad?" voiced Ace, forgetting her oatmeal. "What do you mean, dad?"

The girl laughed nervously. "That's a long story that starts long after your time. But he's my dad," she said, pointing to the Doctor who was now staring at her with his head tilted.

"The Professor's your dad," Ace repeated. "Who's your mum? Let's hope it's not the Rani," she teasingly told the Doctor.

"The Rani?" the girl repeated in turn. "That's the amoral Time Lady, right? I don't have much head for stories and all the villains you've fought sort of... blend together after a while. Though my favorite story was that when mum got turned to a statue. The villain wasn't even a proper villain..."

"Your mother got turned to a statue?" asked the Doctor. "What was I doing at the time?"

"I probably shouldn't tell," the girl fidgeted with her hands. "And it was a timey-wimey adventure that included several causality loops on several scales."

"I see," said the Doctor. "Should I offer you a ride home, then?"

"Oh, there's no need," answered the girl with a small smile. "Mum's probably just gone to labor and dad will be right along to collect me. TARDIS always goes bonkers when mum's giving birth. When the twins were born, I got sent to the second you and you taught me to play the recorder. Jamie was nice, I liked him, and can understand why you named my brother after him. Of course it's not always because mum's giving birth. Donna jumped time tracks a few months ago when mum and dad spent a week on Phersus Seven and we still haven't found out why."

As if summoned by her words, the whining groan of the TARDIS' materialization could be heard from the console room. With a smile she left Ace and the Doctor behind.

Then Ace jerked up and ran after her, reaching her just before she'd reached the console room.

"Hi, I'm Ace," she told the girl. "It's nice to meet the Professor's daughter."

"Nice to meet you too, Ace," the girl answered with a smile. "I hope you don't mind in the future, but I'd like to have a look at your bike. From what I understand, the technology in it will be very interesting, especially the paradox preventative software."

Ace grinned at her. "I'll make sure to make time for you then, but I'm sure I'd always have time for the Professor's daughter."

"Yes, well, dad's slightly afraid of you and is refusing to take me see you. It's why I was working on the Vortex Manipulator, so that I could come and see you," she admitted when the TARDIS finally materialized inside the console room.

"What's the Professor afraid of?" asked Ace. "It's not like I'm going to blow him up."

"You didn't-"

The TARDIS doors opened and a young man stood there, dressed in a burgundy velvet coat and bow tie. "Jackie! Come along! Ida and Alistair will be here in-" he looked at his watch "-four hours, and we've still got Tim and Tom to find."

"In a minute, dad," answered Jackie and turned back to Ace. "As I was saying, you didn't exactly part on the best terms so dad is a little leery of finding you again. But your bike really is-"

"Now, Jacqueline!" demanded the young man. "Or I'll ban you from the lab and make you read history instead!"

"I said, IN A MINUTE! I AM TALKING!" Jackie shouted at him and Ace couldn't believe the transformation that took place in the girl in front of her. The young girl who'd seemed perfectly harmless was radiating vibes of something that made Ace want to cower. Her blue-grey eyes that had seemed like a lake on a summer day, cool and calm, were now icy and flashed with anger. Her hair seemed to puff out like an angry cat and and her hands were balled to fists.

But the young man didn't even react. "Oh, don't try that with me, missy, I was shouting that to Daleks before you were even a thought in the back of your mum's mind. Now, into the TARDIS so that we can go locate your brothers," he said. "Or do you want to be the one to explain to mum why we weren't there to help with the delivery."

Jackie slumped and went over, dragging her feet all the way. "Bye Ace, bye dad," she told them over her shoulder just before she entered the other TARDIS. The young man closed the door behind her but smiled at the Doctor and Ace before doing it.

Not long after the other TARDIS began to dematerialize.

"So, you'll have kids in the future," Ace told the Doctor who'd followed her and Jackie from the galley.

"So it would seem," he agreed. "Now come my dear, I must suppress our memories of the incident."

'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'*'

"Ooh! Look Tim!" a childish voice said from the doorway that led deeper to the TARDIS and two little boys of about six ran to the console room, halting everything. They both had black hair and grey eyes, wore an overall and a t-shirt under it. One was wearing blue, the other green. "Three daddies!"

"And two mummies and Clara!" the other, apparently Tim who wore green, squealed excitedly, wrapping himself around Clara's legs, giving her a big smile.

"What?" said the pinstriped Doctor. "What?!"

"Daddy's silly," the other boy, the blue wearing one, said matter-of-factly to Rose. "Isn't he, mummy?"

"I think he's just surprised that you're here," Rose said slowly, eyes darting to her second Doctor, even as her third Doctor gaped just as unseemly at the twins.

"Oh..." Tim bit his lip. "Donna jumped time tracks a few months ago and then Jamie told us we'd jump them too when Ida and Alistair would be born."

"Donna met the Paradox and her parents!" the still unnamed twin told Clara with a grin. "She said they were nice enough but not quite as brilliant as daddy made them out to be and she said him missing them made his memories of them dis-tor-ted, em-pha-si-zing the positive aspects and leaving out the negatives."

"Those are some big words for such a little man," Clara said, bending down to his level.

He nodded eagerly. "I was reading a dictionary for some light reading-"

"Hermione in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone when they're looking up information on Nicholas Flamel!" interrupted Tim excitedly. "That's one point for me!"

The twin blew him a raspberry before continuing. "I was reading a dictionary before bed and then mum quizzed me on how to pronounce them. She was so proud when I could say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ("Mary Poppins when they're in the chalk painting after the fox hunt and horse race! Another point for me!") and raxacoricofallapatorius on first try. She said it was important we learn to say big words without halting because on Gallifrey it's insulting to pause in the middle of a person's name and the Lady President Romanadvoratrelundar was an old friend of daddy's."

"But- what-" the pinstriped Doctor spluttered. "Gallifrey?" he said weakly.

"Daddy really is silly," Tim shook his head.

"But..." the other twin squinted at the three Doctors. "Three daddies... like in that story about saving Gallifrey, remember, Tim?"

"The one with the Moment? I like that one!" Tim said and he too looked around, his eyes falling on an empty space. "Bad Wolf," he said, his eyes flashing golden. "Oh... Oh! This is so cool! I'll never, ever get tired of time traveling!"

"That's what I was going to say!" the twin whined.

"I got there first!" Tim said smugly. "Just like I'm older!"

"Are not!"

"Am too!"

"Are not!"

"Am too!"

"Are not!"

"Am too!"

"Are not!"

"Am too!"

Over the bickering the three Doctors, Rose and Clara could hear the TARDIS materializing inside the console room. Once the doors opened, out popped the bow tie Doctor, looking slightly harried.

"Tim, Tom! What have I told you about fighting?" he asked the twins who ran up to him.

"Fighting with your siblings builds personality-"

"-and develops your social skills and you may-"

"-do it as long as it's not an inconvenient time-"

"-such as saving the universe or mum's  _that time of the month_."

"Yes, well, we're adding  _when your mum's in_ _labor_  to that list," the new Doctor said and ushered the twins to the other TARDIS. "Jackie! Feed the twins!" Then he turned back to the others in the console room. "Clara," he nodded to her, "love," he smiled to Rose, "me, myself and I," he nodded to his past selves and winked at Rose. "Billie Holiday, song Me, Myself and I (Are In Love With You)," he announced with a smirk. "That's one point for me. Jamie! Begin dematerialization!" he called over his shoulder and closed the door.

"Well..." the Warrior mused. "Maybe the future isn't so bleak after all."


	4. Temporal accidents

The laughter of children cut through the UNIT compound and Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart looked up from his paperwork. Children were  _not_  authorized to be there, even for Bring-your-child-to-work days.

With this in mind, he wasn't so surprised when he found pandemonium outside his office with soldiers running around, trying to figure out what to do with the group of people in the middle of the yard.

There was a young man in early twenties with red hair, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt (and hiding no gun that the Brigadier could see). Next to him was an eighteen-year-old girl with dyed blond hair, also dressed in jeans, but she had some kind of mauve sweater over a rose colored shirt. They were both yelling at a sixteen-year-old girl with natural blond hair dressed like a sophisticated hippie, if such a thing was possible.

The laughter came from eight-year-old twin boys with black hair dressed alike and only identifiable by the different colors they wore (red and teal). They seemed to be entertaining two three-year-olds, a boy and a girl, by reenacting something.

”Dad is going to kill you!” the young man was shouting.

”I have a date with Luke today! Never mind dad killing you, I'M going to kill you!” the older girl screamed.

”You're not supposed to bring your experiments outside the lab unless you're sure they're not going to cause spontaneous time- and space travel!” continued the young man.

”It was completely stable until Tim bumped into me! And now he's set me back three weeks!” the younger girl defended herself. Then she looked around. ”Where and when are we anyway?”

”You tell me, you're the one who has an over-developed time sense!” the older girl scowled.

The natural blond continued looking around, taking in their surroundings. ”Well, I can tell it's Earth in the nineteen-seventies.”

”Oh my God,” the older girl said when her eyes landed on the Brigadier. ”Is that the Brigadier?”

”What? Really?” piped up one of the twin boys, looking around wildly. ”Where?” he asked excitedly. ”I wanted to ask him to explain how he founded UNIT for my project on how humans reacted to alien contact before the official first contact!”

”We know, Tom,” voiced everyone but the three-year-olds.

”You've just been pestering dad to take you see him since he told you how he met him,” the young man said tiredly. ”So, how early in the seventies are we? We know dad got grounded in '69 until early seventies, but if he isn't here... we could always look up uncle Jack in Cardiff. Does anyone have psychic paper on them? 'Cause I don't have any money on me...”

”We can't go to uncle Jack!” protested Tom. ”He didn't meet up with dad again until he was traveling with Martha in 2007!”

”What about aunt Sarah Jane?” asked the oldest girl

”No, either she hasn't met dad yet, or she's traveling with him, and I doubt she'd want dad's seven future children crashing her couch,” the young man shook his head.

”Oh! I know! Billy Shipton! He got landed in '69 by the weeping angels!” said the younger girl. ”I could ask him how it felt! How cool would that be?”

”Or Tom Connely from '53! He should be about thirty right now,” offered the older girl. ” _No power on this Earth can stop me!_  Dad's such a romantic.”

”If it's past '74, we could go to Alec Palmer and his wife,” said the young man thoughtfully. ”I'd be interested in the machine dad built to jump to the bubble universe.”

”We could always ask the Brigadier if we could stay here until dad locates us,” the other twin said practically.

”How long do you think it'll take mum and dad to realize we're not on the TARDIS?” asked the younger girl. ”Hypothetically speaking?”

”Not until Jamie's not baying for dinner,” snorted the older girl, hitting the young man on his arm.

”Cut that out, Donna!” the young man, Jamie, cried, rubbing his arm. ”I don't know where you got that hitting thing from.”

”Mum says it's from grandma Tyler,” answered the girl, Donna, pertly. ”And probably the influence of my name. Both grandma Tyler and Donna Noble slapped dad, Donna repeatedly.”

The Brigadier, who had watched the whole exchange, rubbed his temples. He now had seven time displaced children of a friend he didn't know, but suspected being the Doctor, and they were all talking and shouting and laughing and generally giving him a head ache.

”Attention!” he finally shouted at them, making them all fall silent and turn their attention to him. ”I am Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. Who are you? Introduce yourselves, oldest to youngest.”

They all glanced at each other and eventually the young man stepped forward. ”James Tyler, everyone calls me Jamie, twenty-one years old, oldest son of the Doctor and Rose Tyler. These are my siblings...”

”Donna Tyler,” continued the oldest girl. ”Nice to meet you.”

”Jackie Tyler,” the younger girl picked up. ”Actually it's Jacqueline, but everyone calls me Jackie.”

”Timothy Tyler,” one of the twins said. ”Call me Tim.”

”Thomas Tyler,” the other twin said. ”Call me Tom.”

”'M Ida!” the youngest girl said with a big smile.

”An' I'm Al!” the youngest boy said.

”Uh-huh, Al, properly, everyone else did too,” Jamie admonished him.

”Alith... Alithai',”the youngest boy scrunched up his face in concentration as he tried to pronounce his name.

”Alistair,” corrected Jackie.

”I said that!” protested the little boy who apparently carried the same name as the Brigadier himself.

”And what are you doing at UNIT?” the Brigadier asked before it could develop into a fight.

Jamie rubbed the back of his neck. ”Ah, see, Jackie had an accident with one of her portable time travel machines that she's been developing and, well, it sent us here. What year is it?”

”1971, April 3rd,” answered the Brigadier.

”Great!” Jamie grinned. ”Dad's here! He can help us gobble together a temporal beacon to lead dad here!”

”And I suppose your father is the Doctor?”

”How ever did you guess?” Jackie asked dryly.


	5. Temporal accidents: How to feed hungry Gallifreyans

**How to feed hungry Gallifreyans**

The Doctor came in from having lunch with Jo, who'd ambushed and dragged him along to the closest pub with several of the young soldiers he suspected Jo found physically pleasing. It hadn't been as bad as he thought it would be, but he'd have preferred to have skipped the whole thing as his superior physiology would have let him go for another ten hours before eating. He expected to find his lab like he left it, perfectly ordered, save for the current experiment.

What he found, though, was that his laboratory had been invaded by youngsters from Gallifrey. One of them was going over some papers while another one seemed to be teaching the four youngest.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded loudly over the hullabaloo of them mucking about with his lab.

The oldest one, a male, looked up from his...  _work_ , though the Doctor was loathe to call it that. "Oh, dad, you're back! Great! Can you give me a hand with this? Normally Jackie would help me with all these temporal physics, but she's out on a food run as a punishment for accidentally sending us here."

The Doctor was taken aback by the youngster's cavalier attitude. " _Sending you here by accident?"_ he repeated. " _Dad?_  I am not your father, boy!"

"Not for seven more regenerations," he answered and shoved some of the papers to him. "We're trying to build a temporal beacon to lead the TARDIS here, but this decade is hard to scourge parts for anything useful. Jackie came up with the idea that we might be able to use your TARDIS as a conduct for the signal, but then Ida and Alistair got too hungry and she had to go get the food before we could discuss it further."

"I'm hung'yyyy!" came from the youngest boy in the room. "I want mummyyy!"

"Will daddy do?" asked the young man and pointed at the Doctor who still stood in the door frame, holding the papers to his chest, a dumbfounded look on his face.

The Doctor could feel the psychic echo of the child's pain and need and hunger, could feel all of them, even the one who's getting closer all the time now that he's been made aware of them, much like he had felt his other children on Gallifrey before he'd taken the TARDIS, even if this time it was both stronger and weaker. It was like these children weren't loomed but actually made (and he blushed at the very thought, more than mortified), which made the bond stronger, but because of their temporal displacement on his own time line, it was weaker than it should be.

The little lad nodded and the young man picked him up, carrying him over to the Doctor who just had time to drop the papers he was holding before his arms were full of a crying three-year-old burying his face to his neck. Immediately he started bouncing him slightly, shushing him and sending him calming emotions through the bond. It seemed physical contact intensified the bond and he got flashes of a young looking green eyed man doing what he was doing, and a pretty, young looking woman with scotch colored eyes singing the little lad to sleep.

What also got through the bond were the feelings of unconditional love and contentedness and trust and they blew the Doctor's mind away. Never had anyone felt that way about him before, not even his other children when they were small. (That may have been his fault as he liked to keep his distance those days.) The closest one had been Susan, but her feelings were also mixed up with blind reverence and adoration. Susan had placed him on a pedestal, as if he could do no wrong. But to these children he was clearly a parent, a  _caretaker_ , someone very involved in making sure they grow up right.

He'd always enjoyed teaching and telling others how things should be done, but he'd never imagined he'd have the patience to actually be a parent, to teach someone to walk and read and do basic maths and feed them and change diapers and pick up after them. That's why all those he traveled with were at least well past the need of immediate care, most often able to take care of their own basic needs, even if they got into trouble on alien planets and other time eras and he had to rescue them. And... having children would be awfully domestic.

Come to think of it, why weren't his children in the Academy? Were the Time Lords denying them the entrance because of him? Because he seriously doubted things would change so much in a few hundred years that beginner Time Lords were allowed to travel with their renegade parents.

 _Parents_. A unit of two people taking care of mutual offspring. Who had he taken for mate then? Wife, bonded, whatever. The blond woman with the scotch colored eyes and beautiful singing voice. Who was she? The thoughts from the little lad connected to her were of roses and wolves, all under the blanket word of mummy.

Before he could dwell on her any longer, the last of his future children came in, leading a Private who was carrying several bags of take-away food. Jackie was chattering on and on about temporal physics that the Private had no way of understanding, but he looked at her like she hung the Moon, as the Earth saying went. The Private was one of the soldiers he'd just had lunch with, one of the young and pretty ones.

Immediately he glared at the twenty-seven-year-old man. Jackie, his daughter, was much too young to have a man of his age exhibiting interest in her.

She noticed when the Private set the bags down and snorted at him, rolling her eyes. The Private turned around, most likely to talk to her, and noticed his glare. His reaction was to quickly wish them all a good day and beat a hasty retreat.

"Really, dad?" Jackie asked. "It's not like I was interested in him. For one, he's from a very boring decade and more than a little uneducated for someone I'd want to date. For another, he's of the wrong gender."

"Is that why you've been wanting to visit Ace?" asked the oldest girl. "After meeting her, you've barely been able to talk about anything else. Does little Jackie have a crush?"

"Shut up, Donna," snapped Jackie. "At least I'm not as pathetic as you, mooning over a boy who only sees his best friend's little sister."

"You don't know that! Also this date is all about changing his perspective of me," nodded Donna. "I want to make sure he knows I'm not that twelve-year-old child who stepped out of the TARDIS, hiding behind Jamie."

"That's enough!" the Doctor managed to snap before Jackie had time to retort. "Will one of you now distribute the food? I believe the youngest are all on the verge of tears."

"Yes dad," both girls muttered and stated unloading the bags. Pancakes with butter and sugar were put in front of the youngest girl, the little lad had pancakes with maple syrup, the twins got fish'n'chips, Jackie took out a hamburger for herself, Donna had ordered a chicken Caesar salad and Jamie got a cheese pizza.

The Doctor watched with a small smile as Donna and Jamie cut the younger twins' pancakes before leaving the two to eat on their own.

"Did you bring custard?" asked one of the older twins, the one dressed in teal.

Jackie rolled her eyes and reached to the remaining bag. "Of course. What kind of person do you take me for? Fish fingers without custard... don't be absurd."


End file.
